Laughter Lines
by CourftheCat
Summary: I'll see you in the future when we're older, and we are full of stories to be told.


_**Hey guys! So guess where the idea for this fic came from? Yep, another Bastille song (obsession, it really did take control). So this is one of my first ever happy-ish fics to come out of a midnight of being unable to sleep. It's based in England, cause I don't have enough info on France for this fic, and it's also set around the time of WW2, so it's very AU. Sorry for any historical inaccuracies. Enjoy!**_

Courfeyrac didn't have many childhood memories he was very fond of. His father worked for the army and, as a result, he travelled around a lot. Staying in one house for more than a year was a rarity, and Courfeyrac never really had friends. But he always remembered Combeferre's tree.

Moving to a house near a forest was the best birthday present Courfeyrac could have wished for. Moving was one thing – no one at his school liked him very much – but the forest meant exploration. And exploration was excitement.

Courfeyrac had never heard a chainsaw before. It was a strange thing to hear as you walked through the woods, but Courfeyrac, being an inquisitive eleven year old, decided that an investigation was due.

The boy who was sat crying in the woods was maybe a year older than Courfeyrac, and he frowned. Hopping over a tree root, Courfeyrac sat down next to the boy and sighed.

"Are you alright?" he asked quietly. The boy looked up and dried his eyes on his sleeve.

"Not really," he replied, sniffing, "But thanks for asking."

"Why are you crying?" Courfeyrac mentally groaned, expecting some kind of retaliation about how he wasn't crying, the flowers just gave him hay fever.

"The foresters cut my tree down," he replied. "They said it was too tall for me to climb, and they cut it down." The boy looked at his feet. "I can't climb it anymore." Courfeyrac looked at the tree, lying almost sorrowfully along the ground, and noticed that it was hollow, and small enough to get inside.

"That's okay," he smiled, getting down on all fours, crawling into the tree trunk and sitting down. "It's a den now." The boy's face lit up.

"You're right!" he laughed, wriggling inside to join Courfeyrac. "I'm Combeferre, by the way."

"Courfeyrac." Courfeyrac held out a hand for Combeferre to shake, and with that the two became best friends.

As the six weeks of summer passed in a blur, Courfeyrac forgot why his mother had never applied for a place for him at the local school. The information that he was moving again in September was forgotten, until one day when Courfeyrac got up and dressed to go and meet Combeferre.

"Courfeyrac, sweetie, don't forget you're going to need to start packing again soon," his mother called to him as he opened the door.

"Packing?" Courfeyrac repeated before remembering. "O… oh." He knew better than to argue with his mother, and so, fighting back tears, he ran out into the forest to Combeferre's tree.

"Ferre!" he yelled out. "Ferre!" Combeferre's head poked out from the tree trunk.

"Hey Courf, what's up?"

"We're moving again." Combeferre's face fell.

"What? When?"

"I don't know," Courfeyrac replied, slumping down next to Combeferre. "Some time in the next week." Combeferre spontaneously wrapped his arms around Courfeyrac. "Mother wants me to pack, so I won't be able to come out again."

"You… you mean… I won't see you again before you go?" Courfeyrac shook his head.

"This is goodbye." Combeferre hung his head.

"We'll see each other again soon," he smiled sadly. "You know, when we're older. We're gonna randomly bump into each other on the street. And… we're both gonna have laughter lines -"

"Wrinkles?" Courfeyrac laughed.

"Yeah. And… millions of stories to tell each other."

"Promise?" Combeferre made a cross over his chest with his finger.

"Cross my heart." Courfeyrac did the same.

"Cross my heart."

-/-

Courfeyrac was sixteen when the war began. He learned about it in his new school, about how Hitler had marched the German troops into Poland and England had declared war. They were calling it World War 2.

Courfeyrac remembered his father walking away from home, off to fight on the front line. He remembered waiting two years to be eighteen and signing up too. He went into the war to find his father, he never really thought about having to fight or kill until it was too late. He didn't want to kill anyone, not even the Germans. He remembered being told about Adolf Hitler in school, about how he'd forced the people to vote for him, about how he had the Gestapo and the concentration camps for those who didn't. Courfeyrac believed the Germans were innocent. And he couldn't kill innocent people.

The piece of shrapnel that caught Courfeyrac in the shoulder while they were in the trenches in France was enough to send him home, a Blighty one, the others called it. The pain was too much for his consciousness to take, and soon he drifted away from it.

-/-

Waking up in the hospital bed in England was a relief for Courfeyrac. He didn't have to kill anyone else. The nurse that came to talk to him brought a doctor, a man with kind eyes and glasses. Courfeyrac remembered the nurse talking to him.

"Courfeyrac, this is Dr. Combeferre. He's come to see you."

"Ferre," Courfeyrac murmured, staring into the child eyes of the man he knew was his best friend.

"Hey Courf," Combeferre murmured, sitting down beside him and smiling.

"You've gone all wrinkly," Courfeyrac laughed. "Ferre, you were right." He poked Combeferre's dimple playfully. "Laughter lines."

_**So I may have got my wars mixed up… oops. Somewhere in the distance my history teacher is crying. Hope you enjoyed!**_


End file.
